A surprising spreader of myths

We are all used to hearing the same old Boer War myths spewing out of Pretoria University, and being faithfully regurgitated by unreconstructed National Party zealots, and other knuckle-draggers of the Afrikaans Far-Right. It was thus an entertaining surprise to be made aware of a bizarre – and completely baseless – outburst from a rather different source.

‘The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914’ was written by the impressive-sounding Sir Richard John Evans FRSL FRHistS FBA FLSW. Though it is obviously a history which focuses on Europe, at one point Evans touches on the Boer War. One would expect a little better from a Knighted Professor of History at Cambridge, and a Fellow of three Royal Societies, but instead, he cheerfully trots out this utter nonsense:

‘By the 1890s, the huge wealth of the mines was proving an irresistible temptation to the British, and when the Boers rejected a demand for voting rights to be extended to the non-Boer white inhabitants of the Transvaal in 1899, the British invaded, beginning the so-called Second Anglo-Boer War. An early Boer counter-offensive against Natal and the Cape was defeated by a British army under Lord Roberts’. (pp 660-661)

It goes without saying that Evans provided no reference to support this ridiculous re-invention of history. In reality, the Boer War was – of course – started by a Boer invasion of Natal and the Cape, and it was the British who – under Lord Roberts – later launched a counter-offensive, which drove the invaders out, and captured the capitals of both republics.

Christ alone knows what inspired Evans to write this rubbish, but his lunatic take on the Boer War would be a little like describing the Russian Front in WW2 in the following terms:

‘Tensions between Nazi Germany and the USSR increased throughout the late 1930s and, in 1941, the Soviet Union invaded Germany, beginning the war between the two rival powers. An early German counter-offensive made it all the way to Stalingrad and the gates of Moscow and was defeated by the Red Army’.

Boer War myths: not only spread by the History department at Pretoria University, and other extremists in South Africa.